Empire: World History - 85. The Russian Conquest of America

Episode Date: October 3, 2023

In the 18th century Vitus Bering went from Russia's east coast and landed in America. Over the next 150 years, Russia colonised more and more land, first taking Alaska and then working down America's west coast, eventually claiming areas as far south as California. Whilst this venture did fail, this failure was not inevitable. Listen as William and Anita are joined by Owen Matthews to discuss the most improbable story of Russia and its (almost successful) attempts to colonise large parts of America. Twitter: @Empirepoduk Email: [e-mail] Goalhangerpodcasts.com Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Jack Davenport + Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcasts, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpowerpoduk.com. And welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnan. And me, William Duremberg. I'm excited about today. Are you excited? It's a story which no one knows. I have to say my son, Sam, is the person that, uh,

insisting that we go down this rabbit hole because it is one of the least predictable stories that we've ever done. My 13-year-old is doing some dystopian fiction and what if. And this presents itself with a complete possibility of a counterfactual of a different future that actually could have been. We're talking about a rather unusual story. A very unusual story. Very unusual story. Russia's attempts to colonise America. And we have the brilliant author who has brought us this absolute gold nugget of a story.

Owen Matthews, it really is. The author of Glorious Misadventures. Welcome to the podcast, Owen. How are you? Very well, thanks. Thanks for having me on. No, it's an absolute pleasure. William is hopping out of his skin.

I've been pushing for this one for a while. Yeah, what's have been buzzing with William's enthusiasm. So, look, this is a story of Russian expansionism, which we have covered a lot of. in the series, but we did not know about the expansion west towards America. Tell us more. Still less to Hawaii and California. That's the most improbable story ever. How did you come across it, first of all, because it is not something that people know about? Well, the Russians know about it, and the Russians are very proud of the fact that Alaska was theirs until 1867. A large chunk of the North American continent was administered from

from St. Petersburg and actually pops up from time to time in political discourse in Russia. But actually, the reason I'd heard of my hero, or perhaps anti-hero, because the book is called Misadventures, glorious or not, but there are definitely a lot of misadventures. Nikolai Petrovich Rizanov was a courtier and an adventurer who came closest to making America Russian. And he's actually a very famous figure because there is a rock opera about him. No. Rock opera, no. Where? In Russia? In Russia, yes. So heavy metal rock opera, so Peter Townsend part two. Or a sort of a Hamilton-esque thing. Well, it's sort of soft rock, I would say.

Ah, okay. Yeah, sort of Hamilton, yeah, exactly. A sort of 18th century rock opera that was very famous in the 80s. So actually, all this story is in fact quite well known in Russia, but not, I've not beyond it. How interesting. Just before we kick off with the real story, just to pursue Anita's idea of a kind of factual. Is it coherently possible to imagine that the Bay Area now could be a big Russian Silicon Valley rather than an American one? Yes. Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, it's actually not even wildly improbable.

I mean, we'll get into details of why it failed later. But the bottom line is that basically from 1812 until 1842, the southernmost outpost of the Russian Empire was 70 miles north of San Francisco on the Russian River. That's why it's called the Russian River and at a place called Fort Ross. And for a large chunk of the 18th and early 19th century, the most populous and prosperous town on the Pacific coast of America was not San Francisco, and it was not even San Diego. It was New Arhenghisk, which is now known as Sitka in Alaska. So, in fact, the Russians, having made their way from Siberia across the North Pacific, moving down, firstly through the Aleutian archipelago, then through coastal Alaska.

And then eventually, thanks to my hero, Nikolai Rizanov, arrived. in San Francisco, first as visitors in 1806, later as colonists in 1812. And as Willie indeed observed, they also managed to take a few pops at Hawaii. They had a colony on Hawaii briefly in 1808, 1830. And a fort? A fort. Yes, yes. They had forts everywhere.

They're very good at forts. Less good at sort of actually holding onto their forts or building anything out of it. But to answer your question about how realistic it was, basically Sitka and Nual Hangelsk and Fort Ross, for that matter, the Russian colony in California. is about as far as St. Petersburg as San Francisco is from Madrid. So why not? There's literally no reason. In fact, in fact, it's actually much more logical because the Russia controls a much larger part of the Western Sea border of the Pacific. And the Spanish ships have to go all the way around Cape Horn or across the Isthmus of Panama. But the Russians just have to sail across the Pacific. And also just to pursue.

the counterfactual, there's a really interesting map drawn up by the founder of Moscow University, a man called Mikhail Lamanossov. In 1750, Lamanosso publishes a map of the world from the top, with the North Pole in the middle. And if you look at the world from the top, then you will see that Russia occupies 170 degrees of latitude. By the way, it's a very big country, 11 timesides. It goes all the way around and basically joins up in America. So if you look from the top, Russia is contiguous to Alaska and America. We should say here that Fort Ross is not named after some highlander who made it to California, but Russia.

Russia, exactly. I wonder how many Americans know this. I mean, I'm sort of guessing, apart from Russian River, there are not that many legacies that America acknowledges or still keeps to this day. No, on the contrary, every Alaska knows it. And when you go to Alaska, every single town in coastal Alaska, the dominant feature is a Russian Orthodox church. Really?

We need to go to Alaska. We so do. So I don't know this topography at all. Alaska is mad. Dating from the 19th century. I mean, old. Dating from the 19th century. And the reason for that is that actually the Alaska, strange trivia about Alaska,

is it actually has the largest Native American population of any state. It's nearly 30%. And tilingets and allusions along the coast. And almost all of them are, Russian Orthodox to this day. We've done the counterfactual. Let's do the actual factual. So, I mean, we talked about Russian expansionism into Siberia.

I mean, it was a big focus of our Ivan the terrible episode. 16th, when do they get to the end of Siberia or? Well, it's very interesting because a really interesting way of looking at Russia is that basically it's an eastern version of Spain. They're the same. They're marcher kingdoms on the borders of Europe. Both of them face a Islamic threat, the Moors in North Africa in terms of Spain, the Tartas in South Russia, who sack, by the way, Moscow is later as 1571.

And they also have a gigantic, unexplored non-European hinterland. Spain, obviously, to the west, but Russia has a giant unexplored hinterland to the east. And in both cases, both the Spanish and the Russians, expand as conquistadors. It's an economy of confiscation. It's not really a sort of, they're not settlers like the English in America. They're just conquistadors and they're demanding, they're basically, the Russians going through Siberia are basically like a sort of eastbound Mongol horde. There's a bit of conquistador with the English in America too. You do get mass displacement of tribes. Well, that's true, but they're not plundering anything. In fact, they're starving, but the English colonists in Roanoke and so on.

there's nothing to plunder, whereas there is gold and natural resources and silver to plunder in the new world. And in Siberia, there is what they call soft gold. So that's what drives the economy of confiscation is that actually in late medieval, early modern Europe, you have not just spices and silks, which you tend to focus on, but actually, fur is soft gold because it's tremendously valuable. That's the soft gold that drives the entire expansion. And this is what the Muscovy company is built to exploit. 1585, the musky company is founded to bring furs back from muscovy. Can we start with an actual person who seems to be the seed or very much a fascinating character?

Vitus Bearing of the straight fame. Tell us about him and how he fits into this story. Vitus Bearing marks a new departure and actually is somewhat unusual figure in Russia's imperial expansion because the conquistadors, known as Cossacks, had been merchants and adventurers going eastwards across Siberia and across the northern Pacific for the same reason. Essentially, for that reason, America is an extension of Siberia. It's just somewhere where you can go for fur. But Bering is a different case because Bering is actually sent by the Tsar. He's sent on an official expedition by Peter the Great.

And he's a Danish national originally? He's Danish. And like the vast majority of mariners in Russian service is not Russian. They employed all kinds of Swedes and Bolts and Germans and Scots. Scots. And lots of, yes, lots of your hooligan countrymen who've been in trouble. Thank you for that. It's like sort of Dubai.

St. Petersburg was basically the Dubai of the 18th century. You can't move a Dubai for kilts. Jacobites and other sort of, you know, defeated rebels and second sons would wash up. Are you a defeated rebel and the second son? No, no, no. Listen, he's prides himself on his Scottish lineage and you've just trampled all over his kilt, which probably should be packed up for his journey. So Bering is an outsider but an insider at the same time.

What does he do and how, what is his trajectory through the ranks? Bering is sent to explore the Pacific by Peter the Great for absolutely imperial strategic reasons. And that's the difference between him and Cossacks. He sent off with just 34 officers and men in 1724 to, cross Siberia on foot, which is about 10,000 kilometers. And this is a man who's made his name as a seaman originally. Yes, he's distinguished seamen. The one thing the Russia doesn't have, which is a bit of a problem for a major naval expedition, is ships. Yes. So they actually have to cross Siberia on foot, which is roughly the same as walking from London to Johannesburg, it's 10,000 kilometers. Wow. It takes them two years carrying their tools, also anchors and iron, because there's none. They make their way to the Pacific coast.

of Russia. It takes them two years. Are they literally walking? Are they're dog slaves? Or what's the... Walking, dog slays, rafts. And do they have maps? Do they know where they're going? Do they know what they're heading into? Yes, yes. The roots are pretty well known. It takes them two years and they build their own ship.

They sail around the Northern Pacific and find the Bering Strait and nothing else. The more interesting expedition is in 1733, where Bering goes back. And this time he builds two ships. again like you know two-year walk across Siberia build your own ships in the same drill he built his own two ships the piota and the Paival the Peter and the pool and that's why the main port of Kamchatka is called Petro Pavlovs and he sets off across the Pacific and this time he actually gets much further and one of his two captains Alexei Chilikov in the Paevil actually lands on the north coast of America on an island called Jacoby Island and he tries to

land a boat, both of his boats disappear, he can't land, and so he returns. But nonetheless, that is like the first Russian landing in North America. It must be noted that it's not the first European landing in the North Pacific, because Francis Drake, very impressively, had got there before in the 1570s, and in fact got as far as San Francisco, amazingly, in the golden hind. But this is the first time the Russians show up. Like Drake, Bearing is a bit of a brute. He's enslaving and punishing the local indigenous, you call them Koryaks? Yes, the Koryaks and the Kamchatadals. And, you know, essentially rather like the Spanish in the new world,

the Russians are, you know, essentially extraordinarily brutal and genocidal and exploitative and disastrous for the native populations. I mean, in one generation, the native population of Kamchatka goes down from about 3,000 at the beginning of 18th century to a few hundred by the middle of the 18th century. So the Russians behave appallingly. Yeah, I mean, he's confronted. I mean, you write that he's confronted for totally unchristian and cruel treatment of the Coriaks. By whom? I mean, what is the blowback that he's getting? Well, it's not really so much about Bearing. It's about Gordi Shilikov, who's a later merchant who basically does the same thing. He takes the discoveries of Bearing. Bering, I may say, never makes it back to St. Petersburg. Bering dies, doesn't he? In Skervi? He crashes his boat on Bering Island and dies, yes, either of Scurvy or. of a heart attack, it's not clear. 6th December 1741.

Yeah, it's all pretty disastrous. But a little bit later, there are merchant adventurers that try and take advantage and systematize the new lands that Bering has written about. And one of them is Grigorye Shelyakov, and he is really the first. He's a merchant who makes his fortune in Irkutsk in central Siberia. And he founds a commercial company basically based on the systematic exploitation of the locals across the Aleutian Islands in Alaska. And yes, basically, he enslaves them and shoots them and treats them very badly. But by this time, Russia, the 1760s, 70s, Russia is ruled by a German, a German princess with no Russian blood at all.

Catherine the Great. Catherine the second, yes. and she, with her enlightenment principles, thinks that this is not very kosher. It's like not okay to be ruthless and appalling. And actually, you, Sheelikov does actually run into some disapproval from the sort of Beaumont of St. Petersburg for his methods and behavior, because they think that Russia should be bringing religion, or civilization, but specifically religion. And it's rather a similar debate again to the Spanish, because the Valadolid debate, back in the 16th century, the Spanish having the same debate, like, are these natives Christians,

in which case they needed to be treated like Christians, like people that can be potentially sort of Christianized, or are they just sort of non-human, in which case they can be enslaved? And that debate is going on in Russia. I mean, a couple of hundred years late, but yes, still going on. And Catherine's Great is on the side of the angels. She's on the side of the angels. Well, I mean, she is a big chum of Voltaire. She's a correspondent of Voltaire. She invites Dennis Diderot, the founder of the encyclopedia to St. Petersburg. And in fact, she has to put a

coffee table between her and Diderot because Diderot and his enthusiasm keeps grabbing her knee and he finds it bruising it. So there's the kind of chats that Diderot and the emperors have. She's defending herself on the coffee table from his enthusiasm. Yeah, fork in the hand.

Many of us have been there. So Chirikov, okay, so the enslavement and brutality of Chirikov, there is a financial motivation which might make him rise above Catherine Stutting. And that's because there is money to be made here. And I mean, is the enslavement process all part of his gathering together of these, what will seem exotic in other parts of the world, sea otter pelts and seal furs?

And what does he intend to do with these? And why does it sort of launch him in life? Shilikov gets into trouble because essentially he's using the natives of the Aleutian Peninsula, the Aleutian Islands as slave labour. And personally torturing them? personally torturing them for bad behavior. That's true. And he's essentially a Cossack, but in the wrong century. He's doing the same things that the Cossack Conte Kistols have been doing for two centuries, but suddenly in a new aristocratic enlightened age, that was suddenly not on. And that's where we come to a new phase of Russia's imperial expansion. That is with Nikolai Rizanov, who he's actually the son-in-law of the merchant pirate native torturing. It could, Merch and Shelikov, but he's a man of a very different stripe. He marries Shellykov's 14-year-old daughter, but he's a courtier. He's from St. Petersburg. He's a

nobleman. And he takes the whole thing into a new, different official level. Now, before we leave Sheelikov, there is already a settlement at Kodiak in Alaska in 1783. That's already been founded. So you now have Russian buildings on the ground in what is today U.S. territory. Yes, exactly. From the 17th. 60s, they start building across island hopping across the islands of the northern Pacific. Kodek is actually also an island. First settlement on the mainland is called Newarkangsk, and that's also founded by Shalikov.

And it starts off as a trading ford, again, exactly like the Siberian trading forts of 200 years previously. And its purpose is the same to collect sea otter pelts from the natives. and we've talked briefly about the soft gold, but this is the whole driver of this whole enterprise, the enormously valuable pelt of the sea otter. And for who? Who is it valuable? I mean, does he intend to sell it back home? Or are there other markets that he's got his eye on? I mean, where's the money? Well, exactly. The wellspring of this trade comes when, in fact, strangely enough, Captain Cook's men in his third voyage,

buy sea otter pelts in the northern Pacific from the natives, take them to can't, in China, Guangzhou today, and discover that the merchants of Guangzhou are willing to pay up to 100 US dollars at that time per pelt. And the reason why it's so valuable, a sea otter is aquatic. It spends almost all of its life in the water, including breeding and having babies in the water. And because it's aquatic, its fur is extremely waterproof. It has by far the thickest fur of any landmable by about the factor of three. I have a pelt. And they're also in the same. enormous. They're five foot long. They're very large animals and they have thick, beautiful film. That's weird because I think for Sea Otter is a tiny little thing. You know,

ring of bright water kind of. Yeah, that's huge. But okay, so there's a Chinese market which is burgeoning. Does he therefore have the blessing of, you know, Catherine and others saying, you know what, actually you're doing this very, very well, take it on board and you're going to run this from now on? Yes. The question becomes, the minute the news breaks, that these things are very important. in Canton, are very valuable. These peltz are very valuable in Canton. Then you're faced with a new world because the medieval world, the early modern world, is, you know, you buy, you know, your silks and spices in China, you know, you carry them in caravans across Asia and then you sell them in Europe. A slightly later iteration is, you know, you still caravans, but then across the

Mediterranean, then the Portuguese get into ships. And suddenly, back in the late 18th century, the Russians realize that a maritime empire is the future. It's the new thing. And furthermore, massive land empires is also a major new thing, conquering huge swathes of territory in a single stroke. So you have the British in Canada in 1757, they have one victory in Quebec. And like, hey, presto, Canada suddenly becomes theirs. And as Willie knows better than I, same story in Plessy. the East India Company, one major victory, and suddenly a whole continent is yours. So it's not totally unreasonable. It's not like a moonshot. It's not like sort of Elon Musk going to Mars for Russia to think, well, what about this bit? If they can, you know, let's just have that,

because that's what everyone is doing in that period. We should also say that the same sort of thing is going on on the eastern seaboard of the United States, that pelts and furs are a very, very important part of the early American export trade. Precisely. And in order for the Russians to exploit this, let's say you have a market in Canton, you also have a market in Europe, but it takes a year to transport this stuff across North Asia. It takes a very long time to transport it by land. If you can transport it by ship, and you have a port in a Hortz, because it was then, Vladivostok was not built, it was not Russian. But anyway, you have a Russian seaport in Russian northeast Pacific. You've got Russian colonies in the Northwest Pacific. You've got markets in Southeast Asia.

You know, what do you need to connect those dots as you need a fleet? You need ships. And that's also the one thing that the Russians don't have, and it's one of the major problems with this enterprise. But conceptually, they can have a Pacific triangle trade. Yeah. No, I mean, we sort of trod this ground before. When you've got expansion and economy linked so tightly, you often have corporations that spring up very healthily. I mean, you know, the Muscovy Company, the East India Company. Do the Russians have a similar structure to run this planet, think it all out and dream their big dreams? Corporate colonialism.

Corporate colonialism, that's exactly what it is. And I've just read Willie your book on the East Indic Company with great pleasure also with shock and horror. But it's an extraordinary story. But yes, so the Russians, characteristically, in a century and a half late, but nonetheless, bulb goes on that actually this is the way. things are done. And Nikolai Rizanov, the courtier, who I mentioned earlier, the son-in-law of the buccaneering pirate decides that what they need is a licensed adventure company, just like the East India Company, the Russian version of the East India Company, which is called the Russian-American company, which has, just like the East Indian Company, the right to bear arms, have a Navy,

issued currency. It's basically a state that is going to be set up in America. And the Russian-American company with shareholders and everything is the instrument that they choose to do that. I like to sort of get some flesh on the bones of a character because, you know, but you don't know. What is RASO like? Is he young? Is he old? Is he vital? Is he loved?

Is he handsome? Is he handsome? Is he handsome? Tell us a bit more. Nikolaezanov is a sort of classic colonial character of this kind that pops up in Willie's histories of India all the time. So he's a sort of aristocratic desperado. and, you know, we can speculate as to why William is attracted to those kind of people.

I'm saying nothing here. He's well-born, he's well-connected, but he's poor. It's all sounds familiar. And the poor part is the proximate cause of his going to Siberia, because just as, you know, the impoverished, you know, European aristocrats would, you know, go and make their fortune overseas in the colonies, in Russia the equivalent to that was to go overseas to make a fortune in Siberia, where in fact Razanov's father had been working as a judge for some years.

And in Siberia, the young sort of courtier, well educated, brought up in St Petersburg, well connected, Rizanov, he meets the daughter, 14 years old at that time, of Grigory Shelyakov. She's a commoner, but loaded. So he marries her. It's amazing. How often that acts as a panace. There are many stories, yeah, yeah, aren't they, though? And her father is a bit of a rough diamond, or maybe not even a diamond at all, definitely rough.

And he and his wife, Natalia de Gordievna, are of very formidable characters. They've, you know, personally, you know, spent their time, you know, getting their hands dirty in voyages, you know, abusing natives and so on. But, you know, Schelikov, you know, carved out that empire with his own hands. Rezanov's concept initially was to do something completely different because it was not to get his hands dirty and definitely not get on any ships. He was forced to do that later. But his idea was, you know, I'm just going to sort of incorporate all of this business of my wealthy, father-in-law and use the Russian-American company to bring fame and fortune to myself in St. Petersburg. So he's a strange way, both a sort of imperial visionary and a courtier.

So when is the Russian-American company founded? What's the date? Well, it's finally founded in 1799 because he actually puts it together earlier under Catherine the Great. Catherine the Great, interestingly, is somewhat reluctant to found it because for the precise reasons that we discussed a moment ago is that she's wary of, giving an imperial license to a bunch of cutthroat desperadoes like Shalikov, who are going to be out of control and abuse the natives. But her son, when she dies in 1796, her son, Paivel, the Emperor Paul, hates everything that his mother does.

So if his mother hated it, Paivel loved it. It must be great. In fact, formerly the short answer is 1799 is when the company really has its first existence, the Russian-American company. Even the title is just a brilliant thing. are Paul's motivations more than, you know, this mother-son interesting dynamic than the two of them had? But does he also see it as a means to expand the empire? Does he see it as a good thing in of itself, quite apart from the fact that Catherine thought it was awful?

Well, the Emperor Paul is a wildly eccentric character and he was an extraordinary control freak. I managed to annoy the aristocracy so much that they ended up murdering him after four years on the throne. But the most interesting part was he was fascinated by the figure. of Napoleon, who at this point is just beginning his sort of rampages across the European continent and conquering Egypt and so on at this point. But he has, cooks up this scheme for invading India with a Cossack army across Central Asia with Napoleon. And they set off. And they set off 20,000 of them, like set off in the Gaspian Sea to like tramp across the West Wing's time. And so the world domination fantasy runs strong in the emperor Paul as it does in Napoleon. I've just found the picture

in your book, Owen, of Rosano. And I have to disappoint Anita, I'm afraid, that he's not quite your swashbuckling. He looks rather like a sort of middle-aged sort of teddy bear. He's a, he's a cozy-looking character rather than for all that he has the military uniform and the Order of St. Anne first class. Okay. All right, I've got a buccaneering teddy bear. Okay. I mean, just don't it. I'm still interested. Okay, look, we've got Rezanov, who has now established this company with the backing and patronage of Paul, somebody who believes that you can do whatever he wants and it will be to their good. Let's take a break there. Join us after the break when we find out what this newly formed entity does next. Welcome back. So we've got with us the wonderful Owen Matthews,

and we're talking about this extraordinary Russian-American company, which none of us knew existed until Owen brought it to our... They didn't have the foggiest and I've just had my mind completely blown in four different ways learning about this, Aaron. And the Russian-American company is absolutely modelled on the East India Company and it wants to do to Alaska and possibly California and Hawaii what the East India Company has done to India and then Burma and Afghanistan. Maybe they don't want to do exactly what they did in Afghanistan, but we've been through that catastrophe. but they are a corporate colonial enterprise going out to make money in new colonies and to settle it. So, you know, we now have an entity that is Russian America. What is life like in Russian America for those people who are the first out there? Russian America is spectacularly horrible.

Even by late 18th century standards like hardened Siberians think that it's horrible. So if you just, the point is that Siberia from the late 17th century has been a sort of dumping ground for all kinds of like sort of rejects, criminals, loonies, religious fanatics in a bit like Australia, basically. So it's like this sort of penal colony. Hang on. Let's tick off the people who are going to hear you. Scouts. Australians. Okay. I mean, honestly, I'm just waiting to see which continent or country goes next. But yes, carry on. So Siberia is not an easy. place to live, right? Siberia is already literally populated by criminals, by definition. Everyone who is in Australia is a criminal or a merchant, essentially.

Or old believers or kind of... Or indeed religious fanatics, like old believers who flee. So then New Russia, in other words, Russian America is where people who are like even, you know, too awful, bad and terrible for Siberia go. So like how desperate do you have to be to like leave Siberia? to go, you know, that those are the people. I'm not joking. At one point, the Emperor Pavel insists that a monk goes out there,

that they have religious representation there. And the monks that arrive just are appalled by this specter of sort of sexual deviancy and drunkenness and utterly brutality of the colonists. Razzanov says that the colonists for a cup of vodka are ready to cut anybody's throat. Yes. That's the least of it. Tell us more about the sexual delinquency. Sorry, we interrupted you when you were getting into that.

No, there was lots of sexual delinquency. But the really important thing is that we should actually pick up on that idea of colonists because actually I misspoke. Because in fact, really importantly, they are not colonists. So, you know, whatever one might say about the behavior of sort of English settlers, let's say in Virginia, Massachusetts and so on, you know, in a slightly earlier period, They were colonists, they were settlers. This is where they were planning to build their new lives.

They had a stake in the land that they were building in Plymouth or whatever it might be in America. The Russians in Russian America were there on contract. They were basically like sort of oil workers or mercenaries. They were like just there for a few years. This is East India Company because with the East India Company, they made a point that when you retired, you had to go home, which is why in 1947 the British were able to leave India and not have, like the French in Algeria, a settler class who had settled. So no one in India, particularly after Cornwallis passed a law banning people owning land, no one except a few people with indigo plantations and so on were allowed to buy land or buy houses in India. And this seems to be the case in Russian America.

It does. And if you've got a short space of time to make money and you're brutal anyway, as you pointed out, you know, sort of, well, the worst of the worst. What do they live in? What are they, I mean, because they don't sound like the best people qualified to build even a settlement, to be honest. Or, I mean, how do they get on? What does, what does Russian American look like? If you walked into a Russian American settlement, what would you see? A Russian Orthodox Church?

Well, you can actually see it because there's been one reconstructed, and it's called Fort Ross in St. California, the California Park Service, rebuild the historical site. It's basically, it looks precisely. like the Wild West. It's a stockade. It's a wooden stockade, because there's lots of timber there. It's a wooden stockade with a lot of cabins and Russian churches. And as I mentioned earlier in the program, even today, every single town in coastal Alaska and the Aleutians has a Russian Orthodox church with an Orthodox cross and Orthodox monks and priests, all of whom are Native Americans. And some of them even still speak Russian.

It also sounds sort of very testosterone-driven. I mean, how many women are along for the ride here? No women. No women at all. So that is, you know, there are no roots, there is no chance of family, future or anything else. Well, there is actually strange enough, there is a bit of a debate about this because actually rather similar. This situation has arisen at various other times in colonial history, particularly in the history of Spanish-American, is there was a plan to recruit some Irkutsk prostitutes, presumably not the top end of Irkutschus prostitutes to send them out to Russian America. But it was considered that that was like a sort of terrible idea. And in fact, that's a very good question, Anita, because when in 1806 Nicolae Rosano, after a series of misadventures, finally does get his own personal self to the back end of nowhere, which is Russian-American, shows up in Sitka and he's starving, is miserable, and he's got scurvy and everything. But when Rezanov sees what's happening on the ground with his own eyes, he, as a courtier,

and an intelligent enlightenment man says, like, this is nuts. It's like this is just no way to run a settlement. This is completely unsustainable. What we need, and he quotes Queen Elizabeth I, by the way, saying, you know, that we need to actually have decent people and crucially decent women who will come here and settle and have children and actually make this their home. And even more interestingly and conceptually, really importantly, he wants to create a new Russia, just in the same way that the English created a new England.

on the other side of that same continent. And it's going to be a different Russia. And he has this extraordinary idea that actually the new Russia that he plants in America is not going to have serfdom. It's going to have landowning, independent, colonists and settlers who are going to make a new society there. Sadly, spoiler alert, it doesn't happen. But he does have this idea that he kind of gets what needs to happen for, And basically it's like a pirate camp to make it into an actual colony that's thriving.

And what we haven't said is that before this, there's a great deal of the enslavement of the Aleutians who are living there. The indigenous peoples are actually made to perform forced labour for the company. Yes, that's true. So they're on a hiding to nothing. I mean, it does seem as if this is, you know, shallow ground and he knows it. So at what point does this all start becoming patiently obviously a failure? You know, it didn't work, as you're quite rightly pointing out. At what point does everyone realize it ain't going to work and we should maybe just go home? Well, they don't realize that. What they do

realize at the moment like the aha moment is when Rizanov makes his way all the way down the coast of Costa Alaska, which is very spectacular. And by the way, also landlocked, there was no road from coastal Alaska to the interior of Alaska because there's a gigantic mountain range that separates it from Canada. That's actually why Alaska is such a strange shape. It's like a little, what they call a panhandle, going all the way down the coast for hundreds and hundreds kilometers. You can't get from the coast to the interior. And it's very steeply sloping land. It's very heavily forested, and you can't grow anything there. And that was the problem. But the aha moment comes when he sailed south, Rizan of Sails South in 1806, arrives at San Francisco Bay, which, for those of

those listeners have been there, is in a conspicuously great, lovely, fertile, sunny and generally kind of great place. So he thinks like, hmm, like, why are we being messing about like in it? Why are we there? Why are we in Alaska when we can be in California? And crucially, the Spanish are notionally there. The Spanish have actually founded their first settlement in San Francisco in 1776 precisely because they have heard of a Russian expedition,

which in fact ends up not showing up, But a Russian expedition under Catherine II is put together, that's really the one of the great might have beens, had that great expedition of the 1770s naval expedition with ships instead of just walking across Siberia and building your own, which is not an amazing way to do it. But actually send an actual ship from St. Petersburg to the Northern Pacific. If they had landed at San Francisco, in 1776, they would have found nothing. And the Spanish especially fortified that place in which there was no thing. apart from some natives, in order to resist potential Russian advance. But the garrison of San Francisco, when Nikolai Rizanov shows up in 1806, is 40 men. 1806.

Gosh. There's just 40 soldiers. There's just nothing there. Nothing at all. There's nothing there. It's completely there for the taking. Yeah. Really? So the first thing Rizanov does is like having done a major recchi and sort of made friends with the Franciscan mission, which is,

The garrison is notionally guarding the Franciscan Catholic mission, whose job it is because it's always been a major element of Spanish colonialism, notionally, to convert and save the native souls. It's the monks that are kind of the pole point of the San Francisco mission. Rizano makes friends with the mission. Make sure he does lots of Rekkes. Has some barbecues, because he's never had a barbecue before. It's called a barbacour. In fact, it's like a Spanish thing.

He has a slightly larger scale in modern-day barbecues. It involves like an ox. But anyway, he has barbecues. And then he, after six weeks, proposes to the governor's daughter, who is not the first teenage heiress in his life because his first wife was a 14-year-old, Shellikov's daughter, who unfortunately passed away in childbirth. So he's a widower.

And he sets eyes on 16-year-old, Conchita di Arguello, who is the beauty of the Californians, as the German expedition doctor describes her. And Rizano immediately, opposes to her. And, you know, he has, it's not really clear how far they get in their relationship, but definitely she agrees. And they have a betrothal ceremony. This is the moment history could have taken a radically different direction. This is Rizanov's foot in the door to, you know, establishing a personal relationship in California. But then, clearly, then to be followed by sort of

brutal armed conquest. I mean, you know, I don't think he'd mention that to his future father-in-law, but I think that's definitely what he had in mind. So how does that not, happen? What goes wrong? Why do we not get the Russians moving in on the San Francisco Bay in a completely different history? Well, several things are lacking in this vision. So we've got the big idea, which actually Rizanov, you know, kind of nails it. You know, we can have a Pacific triangle trade, you know, fur from Alaska and California, ships from Ahotsk and Petro Ptapalos in Russia, and plus you have markets in China and Canton. Rizanov has been, in fact, an ambassador, one of the reasons why he's in the Pacific in the first place is as the Emperor's ambassador to Japan,

and he tries very hard to open up Japan to international trade. He actually fails, but I mean, you know, it's definitely, you know, that's where it's at, is setting up a sort of Russian-based maritime empire in the Pacific. The one thing I actually don't have is ships. Again, somewhat fundamental problem for a maritime empire. But Rezavnov buys one. An American ship happens to show up in a New Arhangelsk in Sitka, when all the colonists are starving. They spent the whole winter of starving because they can't grow any vegetables. And in New Arhangles, which is modern-day Sitka, in southern Alaska, an American brig called Juno from Boston shows up. And Razanav goes on board and says, can I write you a check? How much do you want? Name your price.

To which the captain literally says, yes, yes, that's fine. He literally is accept a check. from this guy to like buy his ship and everything in it. And so Rizanov gets an American ship. If they had done that more successfully, then they would have had their maritime empire. And ironically, during this period, the first decade of the 19th century, roughly six times more American ships from America, having gone all the way around Cape Horn, show up in the North Pacific than Russian ones, because Russia just doesn't have the ships. So they're just a tiny bit late. If they'd, if they'd, if they'd, if they'd, tried to do this two decades earlier or decade earlier.

And the wrong people. I mean, you know, Rezaunov can't do it all on his own, I'm guessing. I mean, you know, you need people you can trust and you need people who are at least competent. And it doesn't sound like he was surrounded by a great many of either. That's certainly true. And the third element that he lacked was imperial patronage and money. Because if he had had money and imperial patronage for his big sort of scheme, then actually,

as we know, the seed capital would have come flowing because, potentially he's talking about an incredibly lucrative business. It's a great concept. Unfortunately for the story, on his way back, on his customary, as we've already heard several times, on his like two-year walk back home across Siberia. Carrying his anchor. I do have the most extraordinary image of this sort of platoon. Yeah, but they're carrying anchors the other direction because there's no anchors in the Pacific.

There's quite a few of some people's about. But anyway, and halfway back, he falls off his horse and dies. And that's the end of the dream of Russian-American. Yeah. No one takes us forward. Not entirely the end because of course the Russian America company continues to exist, continues to provide revenue for the Russian state. And in fact, as I've mentioned in 1812, the Russians do make their colony in California. They found Fort Ross as a trading post. So I mean, I just, I know you've said this before, but I just want everyone to hear it again because I like everybody else thought, you know, Ross might have been a good old

boy from America, but it's not named after, it's named after Russia. Yes, and it's on the Russian River, which is another important clue. Now you pointed out, though, sure it's obvious, but it wasn't before you. It remains an isolated settlement with more and more Americans now surrounding it, and American ships in the bay, and it's eventually sold, what, in 1842? It's in 1842. The Russians have this sort of tragicomic talent for, for the worst timing in the world. So back in 1776, when Catherine the Great arms and equips a major naval expedition

with the express purpose of sailing from St. Petersburg to northern California and colonizing it, and then the ships get diverted to like a pointless war that everyone's forgotten with Sweden. But had they done that in 1770s, they would have literally colonized successfully, California, but they had been a short tensions ban. That didn't happen. Then again, in 1842, the Russian-American company thinks like, you know, it's sort of sea otters. It's not like a big thing. And also we must add that actually while the Russians are quite good at sort of brutalizing natives and drinking vodka, the one thing the Russian colonists are very bad at is sustainability.

So, in fact, the whole fur trade and the reason why the fur trade moves from the Urals through Siberia, through the allusions. They wipe everything out. is because it's essentially mining, not farming. The whole trade is moved by the fact you exhaust an area. You've literally caught all the sort of cute, furry animals, and then there's no furry animals anymore, so you just keep going. And by 1842, they basically sort of extinguished the sea otters, and there's now about 50,000 of them left.

Well, in fact, 49,999, because I have one, which is actually quite a healthy population. But at that point, there was almost no sea otters to be had. So they decided like, well, let's give up. What could there possibly be in California that anyone would want? This place will never make economic sense, they say. Yes, this place doesn't make any economic sense. It's like California, like total write-off and dud.

Show me the otters. Show me the autos. I'm entirely anticipating the fact that six years later, gold is struck in California. On the Russian River, literally on the Russian River, which they've just sold. for like peanuts, the entirety of their Californian holdings, which then becomes the heartland of the gold rush. For how much? I mean, you say peanuts.

I mean, how much did they actually sell the Russian-American company? How much did they sell for? Fort Ross was sold for a very modest sum. I think it was around $20,000. But they do hang on to, they sell Fort Ross, but they hang on to Alaska. So they realize that California is unsustainable. And also by that time, essentially the gold rush puts an, end to Russian America.

Russian America's dreams of colonizing California because suddenly California falls up with a gigantic amount of prospectors and speculators and money and so on. They're too late. Yes. But they hang on to what is called Russian America. It's actually on pre-1867 maps of America.

It's called Russian America. It's what it is. It's part of the Russian Empire. It's amazing. With very similar boundaries. I mean, the same boundaries. The same square boundaries. Precisely the same boundaries.

And unfortunately for the Russians, again, this sort of naval problem. becomes an issue they can't hold on to the Pacific. And interestingly, one of the lesser-known interludes of the Crimean War is because the Crimean War is a local war of the French, British and Ottomans against the Russian Empire in the Crimea. But actually, the Royal Navy having its global scope, decides to have a pop at Russian settlements in the Far East.

So the British shell Petra Pavlov Kamchatsky, they shell the main port of Kamchatka and even occupy it for a while. There's like a British military cemetery in Kamchatka. Oddly enough. Tell us about Hawaii. While all this is going on, 1815, there's a settlement in Hawaii. Yes. So briefly, if your purpose is to set up a triangle trade and a giant maritime empire in the Pacific, then why, you know, Hawaii is actually quite an important staging post because Hawaii has two

very important things that you need for ships and that is tarot and food and pigs. So that was where they would get their pigs. And unfortunately, they built their fort and sadly ran out of money and interest and decided that, you know, Hawaii, who needs it? And then just abandoned it, essentially. Well, I mean, look, you've built us so many what ifs here. Let's talk about the what actually. I mean, so what is the death knell for, you know, Russian America and how does it all end? And what are we left with? What are we learned from today? So the death knell is, in 1850s, they realize that the Russian Empire realizes they can barely hold on to their Pacific holdings on the mainland of Russia because the British Navy is just shelled and generally sort of messed up Kamchatka.

So much less can they hold on to Russian America. So the Russian government goes about trying to sell it. no one wants to buy it, especially not Lord Palmerston. Because the Russian ambassador in London said, like, I have a bit of land to sell. It's called Alaska. By the way, Alaska is enormous. If you put just continental Alaska on a map of the United States, it stretches from northern California to Florida. Right.

Goodness. Alaska is enormous. It's a vast state. Yeah. That is a top fact. It's very thin, but there's a lot of it. Lord Palmerston literally says like, we already have a certain amount of real estate in that,

in that neighborhood. It's called Canada. I don't think we need like an extra little bit. Thank you, but no, thank you. Like, no, thank you. So they fail. They try. They literally try to sell it to the British.

And then, because they just sort of run under options, they try and sell it to the Americans who also don't want it. They have a very colorful agent in Washington. It goes around sort of bribing everybody and sort of taking everyone out for dinner and sort of handing out sort of, you know, gold dollars and stuff, and also pocketing large amounts of money to himself. And he finally sells it to James Seward, who's the Secretary of State, of the United States,

in October 1867 for $7.2 million. That's about two cents per acre. Yeah, it's about two cents per acre. And also, by the way, they write the Russians a Czech again. Clearly, like, the Czech system of the 18th and 19th century was like really worked well because the guy who sold the Juno to Rezanov also cashed his check in St. Petersburg, he's got his money. And so it kind of worked weirdly. Anyway, they sell, at the end of the story is the Russians, sell Alaska to the Americas.

And guess what? Surprisingly, what happens in the Yukon Valley a few years after the Russians sell Alaska? Gold is found. They have a gift for this, don't they? They have a gift for missing gold. In the Klondike. The Klondike happens. So again, with impeccable timing, they managed to sell all the gold areas just before gold is found there.

We have sadly run out of time, but I do want to just circle back to the rock opera. Do they, when they do the rock opera of this story, do all the Homer Simpson domp moments? We could have been a contender, or is it not at all that way? No, it's just a tragic love story. You know, a boy meets girl, 42-year-old boy meets 16-year-old girl. You know, the widow meet a meet. He's 16-year-old heiress. They fall in love, and then he leaves and dies, and she waits for him.

But this is actually true. Conchita never got married. She waited for him for over 40 years. He never came back. And she became a nun, and I've been to her grave. He just never, never returned. I am so grateful for this story. And this is your story.

So it's wonderful to have you on. Thank you so much for sharing it with us. Glorious Misadventures, Nikolai Rezanov, and the Dream of a Russian America by Owen Matthews is available from Bloomsbury Publishersers. And a wonderful book it is. It is. It certainly is. It's a probable, unlikely and original book that I've read in a very long time.

Yeah, he was your number one champion, Owen, and I'm so glad. I'm so glad we did it. That is it from Empire. Join us again for the next podcast. Until then, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnain. And goodbye for me, William Drupul.